Tuesday 24 March 2009 09.20 EDT
First published on Tuesday 24 March 2009 09.20 EDT

The first glimpse of a major joint marketing campaign by all 12 of Edinburgh's arts and culture festivals has been unveiled, with a new logo, targeting British, German and North American audiences.

The festivals, which take place throughout the year and range from the Edinburgh international festival and the Fringe to the lesser-known storytelling and blues festivals, are to sell themselves in future under the Festivals Edinburgh umbrella. The new logo is being trailed as a taster for the launch in June of a revamped joint festivals' website, working as a "single-entry" ticketing site for all the festivals' box offices, which sell an estimated 3m tickets each year.

An online TV station – edinburghfestival.tv – is also being launched, with dedicated shows and programming broadcast partly on websites such as YouTube and MySpace. Celebrities including Alan Cummings, Stephen Fry and Vivienne Westwood are being approached to front the promotional programmes as "ambassadors".

The new Festivals Edinburgh logo has been designed so that each event, alongside the tourism agency VisitScotland, can target different nationalities and audiences with "iconic" images. Martin Reynolds, the head of marketing for Festivals Edinburgh, said: "For London and the south-east, it's the scale and variety: images of a Fringe venue with walls and walls of posters. We wouldn't market that in Germany. We know for those markets something iconic like the tattoo or fireworks would work more effectively." Audiences in the north of England, the US and Canada are also being specifically targeted.

The £450,000 campaign, funded by Edinburgh city council, the Scottish government, EventScotland and Scottish Enterprise, aims to end decades of disjointed marketing and protect Edinburgh's status as the world's top festivals city.

The intensifying recession, the slump in tourism and competition from increasingly popular festivals in other cities, including Manchester, Melbourne and Salzburg, has unnerved the Scottish capital's arts bodies and politicians. The city's council is determined to promote Edinburgh as a year-long festivals venue. The 12 events earn the city roughly £170m a year, and are now vital to its economy. The Edinburgh science festival takes place in May, the film festival is now staged in June and the Hogmanay events for new year have been caught up in a three-week "winter festival" in central Edinburgh.